1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally in the field of electronics. More specifically, the present invention is in the field of electronic circuits and systems.
2. Background Art
Advances in fabrication technology are enabling production of electronic systems that are ever more portable and of progressively diminished size. As their portability has increased, these systems have come increasingly to rely on modular power sources, such as batteries, to provide them with operating power. Moreover, as system size has diminished, the batteries relied upon for power have become smaller as well. Despite advances in energy storage efficiency, the reduction in battery size mandated by smaller electronic system architectures has resulted in reduction of the total stored energy available to power those systems. An undesirable consequence of these otherwise advantageous improvements in dimensional reduction is that electronic systems utilizing integrated circuits produced by means of sub-micron and deep sub-micron fabrication technologies are now challenged by limited battery life due in part to current leakage within those systems.
An additional challenge posed by reduced device and system size results from the effect of dimensional restriction on user controls. Inevitably, as the size of a system or device is reduced, the area available to accommodate user input controls is reduced as well. Consequently, the user of a modern diminutive electronic system may be severely limited in the number and variety of system commands under his or her control, due to a limitation on the number of separate input controls that can be supported by the system architecture.
One conventional approach to improving battery life in a battery operated electronic system addresses leakage in the circuit enabling power to the system. For example, more than one power mode may be made available to limit sources of leakage from inactive circuits within the system. By way of a specific example, an electronic system comprising a Bluetooth headset may be configured to have three such power modes, off, standby, and fully activated, where the standby mode preserves battery life while maintaining system responsiveness to communication signals. This conventional approach, although offering some advantages with respect to preserving battery life, fails to resolve, or even address, disadvantages associated with the limited number of user input controls on those and smaller electronic systems.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a solution enhancing the efficiency of an electronic system by increasing the functionality of a user input control, while enabling power conservation.